Hikikomori, Kodokushi, and the Fading Art of Community

What if Japan's super-agers are the "Last Cohort"?

A question I am asked, and to be frank, one I have pondered myself, goes something like this: "Lowell, you refer to the Art of Community in Japan. But what about hikikomori and kodokushi? If Japan is getting community right, how do you explain those?"

It is a fair question.

For readers unfamiliar with the terms, hikikomori refers to people who withdraw from society, sometimes remaining isolated in their homes for months or even years. Kodokushi, often translated as "lonely death," refers to people who die alone and whose passing may not be discovered for days, weeks, or longer.

The scale of the issue is difficult to ignore. In recent years, Japanese government surveys have estimated that more than one million people may be living as hikikomori. Meanwhile, National Police Agency data recorded 37,227 people whose bodies were discovered after dying alone in 2024, with approximately 70 percent aged 65 or older. Broader government reporting suggests the number of people living alone who died during the year may have exceeded 68,000, depending on how solitary deaths are defined and counted. These figures have attracted growing attention from policymakers, researchers, and community leaders concerned about the social consequences of isolation in one of the world's oldest societies.⁵ ⁶

Neither phenomenon fits comfortably alongside the stories I have gathered and written about over the past two years.

Using prefectural data as a compass, I spent the past two years visiting Japan's longevity hotspots, including Okinawa, Kagoshima, Shimane, and Nagano. I also visited Kyotango, r Japan's Longevity Capital, with roughly three times the national average of centenarians per capita. Along the way, I met men and women in their eighties and nineties who were still active, engaged, and contributing to the lives of others. They volunteer, meet with friends for morning taiso, sing in choirs, enjoy karaoke with friends, care for grandchildren, attend clubs, tend gardens, teach classes, plan festivals, and some are still running businesses. In short, they are participating in the rhythms of community life.

Many seemed to possess an invisible support system that helped keep them connected, useful, and valued.

So how can both things be true? Places where people age well and live long, and the community is strong, and places where people are isolated and die lonely deaths.

Early in my research, my friend and advisor, Professor James McNally, a leading gerontologist at the University of Michigan, wrote to me suggesting that I might be documenting the last cohort.

Not the last cohort of older adults, of course. Rather, the last cohort is embedded within the traditional forms of community that once characterized much of Japanese society.

The more I traveled, the more I found myself returning to that thought.

Many of the super-agers I met grew up in neighborhoods where people knew one another. Children were surrounded by adults who were not their parents. Festivals were community events rather than spectator events. Clubs, associations, volunteer groups, workplaces, and extended families created a web of relationships that provided a sense of belonging, purpose, accountability, and support. Community was not something people searched for.

It was simply there.

This led me to wonder whether hikikomori and kodokushi are not evidence that Japan never possessed an Art of Community, but evidence of what happens when some of its threads begin to fray.

What makes this question even more intriguing is that the common explanation may not tell the whole story.

Hikikomori is often portrayed as an urban phenomenon. The image that comes to mind is an individual isolated in a small Tokyo apartment, disconnected from family and society. Yet research has found surprisingly high levels of social withdrawal in some rural communities as well. One study conducted in rural Japan reported rates significantly higher than earlier national estimates.³

If social withdrawal occurs in both cities and villages, then perhaps the issue is not urbanization alone. A more important question is whether the social scaffolding that once connected people to one another remains intact.

A recent study from Osaka offers an intriguing clue. Researchers found that one of the factors most strongly associated with hikikomori was the absence of ibasho, a place where a person feels accepted, safe, and a sense of belonging.⁴ Rather than focusing solely on employment, income, or geography, the study pointed toward something more fundamental: the human need to belong. I found that observation striking.

Much of what I observed in Japan's longevity hotspots could be described as the intentional creation of ibasho. Community centers. Hobby groups. Volunteer organizations. Neighborhood associations. Sports clubs. Karaoke meetups. Places where people are known and expected. Places where someone notices when you are absent.

This is one reason so many older Japanese remain engaged in life long after retirement. They continue to belong somewhere.

As I write, many examples come to mind, including Shige-san, the barber in Shimane who is still cutting hair. When he is not engaging customers in his barber's chair, he can often be found making the rounds of the island's cafés, meeting friends both old and new. He is determined to still be running his barber shop at age 100 and perhaps even set a world record in the process.

Then there are Mr. and Mrs. Wada in Kyotango, aged 97 and 92, who still run a traditional Japanese inn, do light farming, and actively participate in community life. Mr. Wada still enjoys Sunday drives, although these days he has to ask his son, now in his seventies, for the car keys first.

That does not mean Japan is immune to isolation. Far from it.

Kodokushi remains a real and troubling phenomenon. The fact that tens of thousands of Japanese each year are found after dying alone has become significant enough to prompt government attention, media coverage, and growing concern among researchers studying social isolation and aging. So does hikikomori. Yet rather than viewing them as contradictions of Japan's strengths, I increasingly wonder whether they reveal the importance of those strengths.

When people fall outside the circle, the consequences can be profound.

What makes these trends so significant is that they are not merely individual tragedies. Japanese authorities increasingly view both social withdrawal and solitary death as indicators of weakening social connections. They raise questions not only about mental health and aging, but about whether modern societies are still producing the kinds of relationships and places of belonging that previous generations often took for granted.

The lesson I take from Japan is not that community automatically endures. Community is not a permanent feature of a culture. It is a practice. It must be renewed by every generation.

That is why Professor McNally's observation continues to resonate with me.

If I am indeed documenting the last cohort, then the challenge before Japan, and before all of us, is not simply to admire what previous generations built.

It is to understand how they built it.

Because the real question is not whether an Art of Community once existed.

The question is whether we are willing to ensure the art form endures.

Endnotes

1.     McNally, James W. Personal conversations and correspondence with the author during the Longevity Project (2024–2026). McNally is a gerontologist affiliated with the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA).

2.     Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan). Definitions and policy discussions relating to hikikomori and social isolation.

3.     Koyama, A. et al. "Prevalence of Social Withdrawal (Hikikomori) in a Rural Area of Japan." Japanese Journal of Public Health. The study reported a prevalence of approximately 6.7%, challenging assumptions that hikikomori is exclusively an urban phenomenon.

4.     Osaka-based research examining factors associated with hikikomori found a strong relationship between social withdrawal and the absence of ibasho, a place where individuals feel accepted, safe, and connected to others.

5.     National Police Agency of Japan. Data released in 2025 reported 37,227 individuals discovered after dying alone in their homes during 2024, with approximately 70 percent aged 65 or older.

6.     Japanese government data reported by The Japan Times (2025) estimated that more than 68,000 people living alone died during 2024, the majority being older adults. Published figures vary depending on whether they refer specifically to kodokushi ("lonely deaths"), unattended deaths, or the broader category of solitary deaths among single-person households.

7.     Cabinet Office and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare surveys estimate that more than one million Japanese may meet the criteria associated with hikikomori or prolonged social withdrawal.

8.     Sheppard, Lowell. The Art of Community vs. the Nuclear Family. Explores the contrast between linear and circular models of family and belonging.

9.     Sheppard, Lowell. Retirement Villages and the Question of Belonging. Discusses the importance of intergenerational community and the risks of age segregation.

10.  Sheppard, Lowell. The Yakult Lady and the Last Cohort. Examines the decline of informal community connectors and what their disappearance may signal about changing social structures in Japan.

11.  Sheppard, Lowell. Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan (forthcoming).

Lowell Sheppard is the Founder of the Never Too Late Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Senior Advisor to the International Academic Forum (IAFOR), and a long-term resident of Japan. Over the past two years, he has traveled extensively across Japan's longevity hotspots researching the relationship between healthy aging, community, and purpose. His forthcoming book, Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan, explores what the world's oldest society can teach us about extending not only lifespan, but healthspan and belonging.